Fire and Smoke
The First 48 Hours After a House Fire
A house fire ends when the trucks leave, and that is when the second loss starts: the smoke that reached rooms the fire never touched, the water the crews put through the ceiling, and the residue that keeps working on every surface until somebody removes it. This page is what to do in the first two days in a West Valley house, in the order the fire department, FEMA and the insurance industry describe it.
Do not go back in on your own
The U.S. Fire Administration’s first rule is the whole rule: do not enter the house unless the fire department says it is safe. If you are standing outside it right now, call {{PHONE}} and we come to you.
Most house fires here start where they start everywhere. The National Fire Protection Association counts cooking as the leading cause of reported home fires, 158,400 a year across the country in the years it measured, 44 percent of all home fires, with unattended cooking the most common factor. What is particular to a West Valley house is what happens next: a sealed house built for air conditioning holds smoke the way it holds cool air, and the duct system that runs five months without a break carries soot into every room the moment it starts again.
Before You Go Back In
Wait for the fire department’s word.
The U.S. Fire Administration is plain about it: do not enter the damaged home unless the fire department says it is safe. Fire weakens what you cannot see, floors, roof framing, the ceiling over the kitchen, and it does so quietly.
Leave the utilities alone.
The fire department checks water, electricity and gas and has anything unsafe shut off. Do not try to turn them back on yourself. In Phoenix the utilities cannot be restored until the repairs are approved and Development Services has issued a clearance, and the city asks you to call Development Services before any repair starts.
Call your carrier before you call anyone else.
The Fire Administration says to contact the insurance company right away, to get a written cost estimate from any cleaning company, and to keep every receipt for money you spend, because the insurer may need them. If the house is not livable, ask about additional living expenses: a standard policy pays for a hotel and meals when a covered fire puts you out of the house.
Photograph before you touch.
FEMA’s after fire guidance is to photograph damaged items for the insurance file and then handle them as little as possible, because every touch grinds soot further into the item, and the longer soot stays on a surface the harder it is to remove. Walk the house once with your phone before anything is moved.
Assume the residue is a hazard.
The soot and the dirty water left behind may contain things that make you sick, in the Fire Administration’s words. Gloves, a mask and closed shoes for the walk through, and children and pets stay out.
Throw out what the heat and smoke reached.
The Phoenix Fire Department’s own brochure says any food, drink or medicine exposed to heat or smoke should not be consumed, and that medicines can change strength from heat alone. When in doubt, throw it out is their line, not ours.
What Smoke Does in the Days After
The fire is over in an hour. The residue is not.
Smoke does not stay in the room that burned. In the homes studied after Colorado’s Marshall Fire, particles and gases had seeped through cracks and crevices and left soot on carpets, furniture, windows and walls far from the flames. The same mechanism works in a West Valley house, with one local twist: the ducts. The Phoenix Fire Department’s brochure warns that smoke odor sits inside the heating and cooling ducts and that you get a fresh blast every time the system starts. FEMA’s guidance for smoke damaged homes is not to run the air handler until the bulk of the soot is removed, because running it spreads the particulate through the house.
The residue also keeps working. FEMA’s homeowner guide says fire residue that is not removed in a timely manner can permanently etch metal surfaces because of its extreme alkalinity or acidity. Faucets, appliance fronts, door hardware and the air handler’s own coil are the first to show it. That is why the cleaning order matters more than the cleaning effort: seal the burned room with plastic so soot stops moving, as the Phoenix brochure advises, keep the system off, and start with the surfaces that etch.
The water is the other fire.
What the crews put through the ceiling to stop the fire is now in the drywall, the insulation and the slab edge, in a house that is closed and hot. The clock on that water is the one in the 48 hour window: dried within two days, in most cases mold does not grow. A fire loss in the West Valley is almost always a water loss too, and both are documented on the same first visit.
Brush Fire Smoke Without a Fire
The West Valley gets smoke from fires it never sees: brush fires along the Agua Fria and the desert edge, and larger fires upstate when the wind turns. The EPA’s guidance for smoke days is simple. Keep doors and windows closed to keep the smoke out, and use fans and the air conditioner to stay cool; set the system to recirculate or close its fresh air intake, and a MERV 13 or higher filter in the air handler is recommended while the smoke lasts. Pima County’s environmental office adds the Arizona note: run the air conditioner if you have one with the fresh air intake closed and the filter clean, and if you have no cooling in the heat, find somewhere away from the smoke rather than opening the house. None of this is restoration work. It is the difference between a house that smells of smoke for a day and one that holds it in the ducts for a season.
The Insurance Side
Fire is the first peril on the standard homeowners forms and smoke is on the same list, which means the coverage question after a fire is rarely whether and usually how much. The Insurance Information Institute describes what the policy does: it pays to rebuild or repair the home, to remediate smoke damage, it insures your belongings, and it reimburses additional living expenses such as a hotel and meals out while the house cannot be lived in. What the carrier needs from the first days is the record: the photographs from step 4, the receipts from step 3, and the inventory of what was thrown out under step 6, written while you still remember it. Filing a claim in Arizona covers the timelines the state sets for the carrier once the claim is open.
We document the loss, photograph every room, log the moisture from the firefighting water, and write the scope in Xactimate, the platform most carriers work from, coordinated directly with your adjuster. Direct Insurance Coordination, on every claim. We are not adjusters and do not negotiate the claim; we make it easy to read.
Questions
The fire was small and only in the kitchen. Why does the whole house smell?
Because smoke is a gas until it cools, and it travels through every gap in a house before it settles as soot. The Phoenix Fire Department points at the ducts specifically: the smell sits in the heating and cooling system and returns every time it runs. Cleaning the kitchen alone does not fix a house whose ducts carry the fire.
Can I run the air conditioner? It is July.
Not until the bulk of the soot is out, per FEMA, because the air handler spreads it to every room. On the day of the fire that is the hardest instruction on this page, and it is why a crew comes the same day: sealing the burned room and getting the residue off the surfaces is what lets the cooling come back on.
Is the food in the refrigerator safe if the power stayed on?
The Phoenix Fire Department says any food, beverage or medicine exposed to heat or smoke should not be consumed. A sealed refrigerator in a room the smoke reached is a judgment call the brochure answers for you: when in doubt, throw it out, and list what you threw out for the claim.
Sources for this page
- U.S. Fire Administration, After the Fire (FA 46), re-entry, utilities, the carrier, receipts, the residue hazard.
- FEMA, after a fire fact sheet, photographs and handling.
- FEMA, homeowner’s guide to smoke damage remediation, residue etching and the air handler.
- City of Phoenix Fire Department, after the fire brochure, food and medicine, utilities and clearance, ducts, sealing the room.
- NFPA, home cooking fires, the cooking figures.
- Environmental Health Perspectives, Marshall Fire homes, smoke through cracks and crevices.
- EPA, reducing smoke exposure indoors and Pima County, wildfire smoke and your health.
- Insurance Information Institute, fire coverage and which disasters are covered.
Smoke in the House Right Now?
A person answers at any hour. We seal what the fire opened, and we start the record your carrier will ask for.